Economists Report In: Ted Cruz’s Tax Plan Is Laughable

The most recent Republican debate focused mostly on economic issues. GOP hopefuls offered their visions for the future of the economy under their stewardship. Economists have spent time evaluating their proposals and now one has risen to the top of the crazy-pile: Ted Cruz.

Addicting Info summarizes Cruz’s tax plan this way:

… Cruz swore that when he took office he would attempt to abolish the Internal Revenue Service completely, enact a “flat tax” that would result in the wealthiest one percent paying far less in taxes, vowed to let the banks fail during another economic meltdown, and – perhaps most zealously of all – expressed a desire to get back to the Gold Standard.

Regarding the gold standard, almost every intelligent economist agrees that reverting to it is one way to certainly ruin the global economy. The group “Citizens for Tax Justice” also calculated that his plan would cost approximately $16 trillion to maintain.

Cruz’s plan would be more costly than any of the other plans put forth by his competitors. A Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) analysis of the Cruz tax plan finds that it would cost $1.3 trillion in its first year alone and a staggering $16.2 trillion over ten years.

Cruz’s plan would eliminate the corporate income tax, the estate tax, the payroll tax, digging an $18 trillion hole in federal revenues over a decade. He also proposes to sharply reduce the personal income tax, replacing the current graduated rate system with a flat-rate 10 percent. Cruz’s plan would repeal most itemized deductions and tax credits, but it would leave the mortgage interest and charitable deductions largely intact, along with the Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit. On balance, these personal income tax changes would lower income tax revenues by 60 percent and add another $12.8 trillion to the plan’s 10-year cost.